How to Practice Radical Spirituality

In my book “Radical Spirituality” I end the volume with 69 reminders (note the yin/yang symbology and circle of energy in the number) that summarizes our spiritual evolutionary path:

1. Your earthly purpose is to cast away your fear-based emotions. Doing so creates an “absence,” leaving only your God-self to interact with the world.
2. Everything you think, say and do creates karma. And that includes the motive, intent and desire behind everything you think, say and do.
3. Karma is the basis of reality, which means you are totally responsible for everything that has ever happened to you.
4. It is your resistance to “what is” (unalterable reality) that causes your suffering.
5. Truth isn’t something to be found, it’s something you create.
6. Practice meditation, which is training the mind to stay steady on an object without wavering, and cultivating insight to see more clearly.
7. When you don’t allow life to fully express itself, you are repressing who you are, and there will be a price to pay.
8. Be patient, compassionate and generous. Accept your kindness as self-serving, and do it anyway.
9. Give up your expectations of others. If they come through great. If they don’t come through, that’s okay too.
10. Avoid gurus and religions. They’re bad for your mental health and they want your money.
11. Blame is self-pity and incompatible with the acceptance of karma and reincarnation.
12. Incorporate challenge into every aspect of your life to guarantee aliveness. If you don’t make your life interesting, your mind will do it for you.
13. Beliefs are not reality, but if you want to change your reality, you have to change your beliefs.
14. Don’t take things personally. Whoever is giving you grief would be giving grief to anyone who represented to them what you represent.
15. What society calls right and wrong, and moral and immoral is not necessarily so.
16. The point of power is now.
17. Practice being “in the moment.”
18. You will always live up to your self-image.
19. You can not become what you resent.
20. Where your attention goes, your energy flows.
21. Wisdom erases karma.
22. When you show mercy, grace and love, you will receive the same in return.
23. You always have the free will to choose how you will respond in any situation.
24. When you’re upset about the way it is and do nothing to change the situation, you are choosing to allow it to continue.
25. You don’t have to be in control to survive.
26. What you leave incomplete, you’ll be doomed to repeat.
27. Karma means you don’t get away with anything.
28. Within you is everything required to make your life happy and fulfilling.
29. Practice unconditional acceptance of others, by refraining from judgment, blame and expectations.
30. Other people are a mirror for you, because the traits you respond to in others, you recognize in yourself.
31. Everything manifest begins with an idea. Ideas and experiences create beliefs which, in turn, create reality.
32. Awareness is measured by how much you let yourself know of your own truth.
33. Everything you refuse to forgive in yourself and others remains with you as karmic baggage.
34. What other people do does not affect you. What you think about what they do affects you.
35. We are all mirrors of our own thoughts. So unhappiness and failure are self-inflicted while happiness and success are self-bestowed.
36. Every time you get upset with someone else, it is because you have expectations of approval or control (your expectations are in conflict with what is).
37. If you want to understand something or someone, you must observe without criticizing.
38. What you resist you draw to you.
39. Whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve, as long as your desires are realistic and do not conflict with the free will of others.
40. What you deny to others will be denied to you.
41. Love others as you would be loved, treasuring their uniqueness while accepting them as they are.
42. The greatest gift you can give another person is to be all of who you are.
43. In your heart you know the right thing to do at each moment in time.
44. You can detach from the chaos in your life by refusing to choose to control the outcome.
45. Your viewpoint determines how you react to life. You’re always free to choose a different viewpoint.
46. You need difficult people in your life to provide opportunities to test your resistance to what is.
47. What your mind has created, your mind can change.
48. The primary reason people are not as happy or fulfilled as they desire to be is because they do not know exactly what they want.
49. Simplicity is one of the key secrets of well-being.
50. Refuse to make a choice based upon the expectations of others. Instead, act in ways consistent with your purpose.
51. Imagination is more powerful than willpower. Change begins with imagination.
52. Practice being centered; physically relaxed, emotionally calm, mentally focused, and spiritually aware.
53. Practice persistence. Increasing self-discipline is a matter of building the strength not to give up.
54. Very little in life is really important, so separate what is from what isn’t … and respond only to what is.
55. What you resist in other people, other races, other lifestyles, you become, if not in this life, in the next.
56. In life you experience what you are deeply convinced is so.
57. Value being who you are more than being accepted.
58. You are body/mind/spirit, not body and mind and spirit. What your mind doesn’t handle, your body will try to resolve, draining spiritual energy in the process.
59. Suffering is also the source of your awakening.
60. When you’re upset or life isn’t working, become an “observer” by mentally filtering the situation through the observer’s detachment.
61. You will never succeed beyond the size of your vision. So think big.
62. The Universe will support your clearest desires.
63. Pursue your desires with no indecisiveness whatsoever. This assures you of getting what you want.
64. You will achieve self-actualization momentarily, lose it, then go after again. Eventually it sinks in.
65. Never use fear as a justification for avoiding life.
66. Never do things you will have to karmically punish yourself for.
67. Never do anything that causes you to lose self-esteem.
68. Forgive others, knowing that forgiveness is a selfish act you do for yourself to elevate karma and improve the quality of your life.
69. Wake up.

Peace and Light,
Dick Sutphen